Björgólfur Guðmundsson

Björgólfur Guðmundsson (2 January 1941 – 2 February 2025) was an Icelandic businessman and chairman and owner of West Ham United. Björgólfur was Iceland's second businessman to be worth more than a billion dollars — his son, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson being the first. He was at one time the majority owner and chairman of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki, the second largest company in Iceland (subsequently nationalised). He was ranked by Forbes magazine in March 2008 as the 1014th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $1.1 billion. In December of the same year Forbes revalued his net worth to $0, and on 31 July 2009 he was declared bankrupt by the Icelandic courts with debts of almost £500 million (96 billion ISK).

Björgólfur was described in an article written by Jamie Jackson of The Guardian as "a former footballer, furniture packer and law student, a recovering alcoholic of 30 years and an old-fashioned philanthropist". In the 1990s he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for two years, for bookkeeping offences, having faced around 450 charges. He went to Russia, remade his fortune and returned to Iceland, where he also had interests in shipping, publishing, food, communications and property.